Newbie - Hydro site options

[gizmoguy]

Hello,

I am new to hydro power and am making the generator described in the 10' turbine plans but would like to turn it with the creek in my backyard.  My question is this:  Am I better off building a 4' dam with a Banki turbine or water wheel?  Or another idea I've had is based on forcing the creeks water through a funnel into a tunnel of sorts at the bottleneck with a impeller in it.  What would you guys recommend looking at the pics?

It fills a 5 gallon bucket in about 3/4 of a second at normal flow in the chute after the dam so I'm guessing that I have around 350 gallons a minute.  It doesn't get much less than this but can get many times more in a heavy rain.  The river also carries many branches/trash/silt during storms.

Any suggestions/help are appreciated.  The rock dam in the pictures was built by me for looks, it can easily be removed.

If I built a dam I think that the large vertical rock on the left(second picture) would make a good brace for the dam.  Both sides of the creek go up at least 9' and there is about 9' of drop before the neighbors property so nothing would be flooded

Thanks,

Bill

[spinningmagnets]

Dear gizmoguy, I'm jealous! When I retire I plan on having 2 wind-turbines and a ground-mount tracking PV array.

But what I most want is a property with a viable hydro resource. Here's a good story I saved that is useful with 7'-15' head.

The Romans built a set of cascading water wheels in series to mill grain at a place called Barbegal. Your property has enough slope you could have a PalangThai Kaplan, a Banki, and a Poncelet!

Best of luck!

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/6/22/191210/965

[Lowhead]

I think you should look at the LH1000 from Energy Systems and Design.  

http://www.microhydropower.com/Low%20Head.htm

You would get about 250 watts with 4 feet of head if you look at the chart below.

http://www.microhydropower.com/Manuals/LH1000installation.pdf

You can even run several if you have enough flow.  I have a dam with 9.4 feet of head and I hope to have it running soon.  I just didn't get my trash rack welded up before the pond froze.

Andy

[A6D9]

Wow...if everyone is excted about that site I simply cannot wait to show you mine this spring. when I get some #'s.

My stream is about 15-20 feet accross about 5-10 feet deep and it has a beaver dam that is about 4 feet tall.  and further up stream it goes thru 2 huge colverts that are a good 12-15 feet in diamater that i can block off half way.

flow is about the same visualy if not more then this poster.

I own both sides of the land and have permission to do an install.

Not trying to take current posters "spotlight"  just really excited.   I'm lookign forward to gettign the help and askign ym question properly.  

[zeusmorg]

 It looks like(from the pictures) you have a very usable resource.

What you need to do at this point is determine and accurately measure several things.

You need to determine your head, flow and GPM of the stream (google them there are plenty of sites that tell you how, as there are several discussions on how to do so here).

 Once you have determined your basics, then figuring out how to capture your resource is next.

 The different systems have their pluses and minuses. if you have enough fall, a pelton wheel is usually used (however this would not be a good utilization on the 10' axial as peltons are high rpm devices, so to use it, you would have to gear it down..). A Banki turbine (or one of the derivatives) is usually used for medium fall situations but requires a dam to be built. An undershot wheel is good for large streams with plenty of GPM and no to little fall. These are by no means the only solutions, as waterpower has been around since civilization has.

 You also need to determine things like what are your power requirements? Does the stream freeze? What is the lowest flow it has?